I cursed. “She told me she’d look into what we should expect. Have you been eavesdropping on her? Is she really angry with me?”
He smiled wickedly. “She did. I was there, eavesdropping.”
“What shape did you take?”
“I was a large bird, feasting on maggots in the high rafters. There were others.”
“Feasting on maggots?” I asked, aghast.
He gave me a withering look. “Look, you know me. I’ll eat anything. Don’t ask and I won’t have to explain. Your belly’s too weak for the truth, human. She isn’t fooled by your lies. She knows you are stalling. She’s doing her bit, but you are just growing fat, brooding. You gave her an oath.”
I was stalling, I was fidgeting, and hoped a miracle might present itself and everything would be changed. Peace, the dead gone, Shannon alive. But it didn’t present itself, and Shannon and the dead fought for their unlife while I fidgeted. I took a deep breath, “I’ll go tomorrow. But she’ll need to find out what is going on out there, even if I help her by preparing for the shitty world.”
“I’ll come with you to the library,” Ittisana said. “I hate the Citadel.”
Thak pushed me around gently. “You cannot easily fool her any longer,” he said seriously. “She is exploring the situation in Svartalfheim. She is making plans. Many, which we don’t understand, I’m betting. Only Kiera will truly know them. She will obey her to her death. Same as I. Hopefully you too. Prepare. She’ll summon you soon.”
I ground my teeth together. Anja was with the elves, our companion, and my former lover. She had betrayed us. So many had lied to Shannon. And now, when she was dead she would not be willing to let
me
act like a human. I could not stall, nor fidget, nor have regrets, like she had, all these past years.
Why was I stalling?
I was afraid.
I stepped away from Ittisana and leaned on the wall. “If Dana hadn’t fooled her, she’d be alive now. She had better remember I’m the one who is on her side and that she’s made her share of the mistakes.”
“She will try to remember, Ulrich. But she is a Queen now. As for Dana,” Thak whispered, “she knows you are better than her own sister. Yes, even as the Hand of Hel. We’ll have to go soon. Someone will have the Horn. There will have to be a way to gain it. We will have to forget this shitty horror, and help her. And we will.” His tone brooked no argument.
“Stheno won’t have it. She would have closed the gate,” Ittisana said. “She would have blown the Horn and closed the gate they used to attack the world. She is First Born. She can, you know.”
Thak shrugged. “We don’t know. She might have summoned all the kings and queens of the Vastness and beyond and there might be two hundred thousand enemies mustering. She might not need to close it. Be that as it may, we must gain the Horn,” Thak rumbled. “And so we have to go. Soon.”
And that was it. We would take a party through the still open, well-guarded gateway to Svartalfheim. I was to lead it. I wrung my hands, where the iron gauntlets, surprisingly supple gleamed. I had taken them from the dead armsmaster of the House Coinar, and the enemy of Shannon’s elven love. I was missing the mask of the mighty artifact, having left it inside, but I liked the gauntlets. They were like a second skin. They made me feel powerful and confident. Gods knew I needed that. “We’ll go tomorrow. The library that is. Then I’ll meet with Shannon and decide on the date. She must make a plan. We cannot stumble there blind.”
The draugr finished loading the ships. The decks were filled with them, to the brim, and there were so many ships. They stood in silent groups across the decks, spears bristling, but they didn’t open the sails, as many grasped long oars beneath the deck. The ships were sleek, multipurpose coast-huggers, wide and galley-like, but they would not withstand the elven war-magic. Indeed, I could see dozens of Safiroon nobles on the other side, walking ahead of the gleaming wall of steely warriors.
“What
the shit
is she doing?” I complained.
“Maybe they have been invited for a feast,” Thak suggested with a nervous chortle. “I don’t see Shannon. She is not down there. Where is she?” We turned to look at Coodarg with the question but neither he nor the other dead casters showed any sign of humoring us.
And so we waited. The ships moved out, and spread into a line of thirty vessels. Shields were packed to the front of the ships, I saw Kiera sprinting from one draugr to another, and I couldn’t help but draw comparison to the way she had skipped across the deck of the Bardagoon ship we had escaped with when she had still been alive. Now she was something else. I felt her eyes turn my way, and I knew she had sensed I had thought about her.
How? And why did she stare at me so often?
“Don’t,” Thak muttered. “They have odd powers. Don’t make yourself vulnerable. She was a springy flower of the summer, but now she s a frozen lily.”
“Can’t help it,” I said and hugged my chest.
Ittisana slapped my arm. “She’s beyond you.”
I laughed bitterly. “
Far
beyond. She always was, and now especially. I’ve got other things to think about than women,” I murmured, but for a moment, I thought thinking about women might be the only sane thing in my life.
The ships, dark behemoths rowed across. The silence was such you might cut it with a knife. The elven armies were waiting in silent ranks, bravely defending their city. They looked splendid as knights, martial as gods might. They had repulsed smaller attacks all that week, and I knew the draugr disguised themselves as the living and killed and roamed in a campaign of terror across their city, but the elves had found many and stopped such tactics with magic.
How many women and children had Shannon’s order killed?
None spoke of it. But many, I was sure.
The ships rowed on, and then I saw the elven maa’dark move to action. My hair stood on end as the enemy grasped strands of ice and fire from the great power, folded, braided, combined them in many fantastic ways, and released the powers at the ships.
“Fiery beard of Zon!” Thak roared as he witnessed the spells.
Most were fire spells. Many were balls of fiery death, hurtling and sputtering, dropping tears of flames across the pier and water as they hurtled towards their target, but some were even more deadly. They were powerful gusts of ripping wind.
We felt such spells all the way across the Straits.
My robes fluttered, Thak frowned as several of the draugr
-
filled ships dipped, rose, and turned, just as the fiery balls hit them. The result was oddly beautiful. The draugr, each able to see the magical powers since their death, summoned guarding energies. Spheres of white and red sprung to being, but the forces hurled at three of the ships did horrible damage. “Madness!” I yelled as one ship was torn in the middle by a flaming ball. It simply rolled over. It tossed the undead army to the sea, many burning, ship-parts raining high, and then another ship was blazing, the draugr jumping to the sea.
The rest of the ships kept on going, many with burning wood and shattered bodies, and the elven nobles, dozens of them pulled at new energies.
“They will be slaughtered,” Thak said desperately. He pulled a man-sized sword, which I knew would be giant-sized if he grew to his full height. He stepped up to Coodarg and roared. “What in the name of Odin’s dripping nose are they doing?”
Coodarg ignored him.
And that’s when the surprise hit the elves.
The dead didn’t breathe. Thousands of arms reached up from the water. Heads appeared like rings on water during the rain. Spears and swords followed, they heaved up, so fast. The elven mages faltered, as the small beach before them filled with a savage enemy, many of whom were grasping at spells. Fire and ice ripped out of the draugr army. Files of elven army fell in ruin. Many maa’dark screamed and died and then they braided defensive spells, retreated for their army, and unleashed spells at the thousands of the dead charging them savagely. Spells, spears, arrows, flew back and forth, and there was a boom of thunder, which reminded me of Shannon and her powers. Thousands of the dead charged forward, spears glittering, throwing befouling energies as they went, dark fire slapping a swath of terror across the elven ranks and they hit the enemy shields head on. They hacked, the enemies in a fierce battle and our ships doubled their speed, Kiera shrieking orders. The elven ranks bent, they stepped back, warriors falling as the undead hacked at them, grinning at them with their dead faces, terrifying the living.
A great elven general roared defiance, and then fell flaming, as a draugr unleashed fire across his face and chest.
Another golden-helmeted elf screamed an order from the last ranks. We could see him from the mirror. It was a male elf with white, hugely thick hair. A general? A noble? The enemy took heart, chanted savagely, stopped retreating, and hundreds of spears reached over the first rank of elven infantry, and pushed at the draugr. Dozens fell, the attack faltered into butchery. Spears stabbed, swords hacked, and spells blasted living and dead to Hel’s hands. It looked like a wave of dark pushing at a castle of silver and green, and the elven skills with arms were well matched by the magic of the draugr. I saw the enemy flatten against the dead, pushing them back to the water in places, and then the ships arrived, and hundreds and hundreds of draugr poured to the mad melee. I saw Kiera, at the stern of one of the ships, eyeing the battle. She wasn’t giving orders. The vision in the mirror shifted to the raven again, then the battle. Coodarg was moving his hands subtly and we saw archers, then Kiera again. Arrows flew around her, one hit her on the thigh, but she simply pulled it away, and then her eyes fixed on something.
The vision faltered and we saw a group of elves.
At the rear of the elven army, there was a lizard, and on the lizard sat an elven male. Then, someone tugged at him, and he argued, then dismounted cursing and an elven female climbed on. She was delicate, short, pretty with pouty lips and hugely blonde hair, and she was frowning as she gazed at the huge melee. The vision in the mirror shot to the raven, then Kiera, who was speaking, but not to anyone we could see.
The elven female stood up on the saddle with superb balance, and began calling for mighty powers. I felt it. She was filled to the brim, and it was a large vessel. She was one of the daughters of the dead Safiroon lord of their House, and a mighty arch-mage in her own right. She let go of the power, and icy wind rose from the sea. Swells rose up. It looked unnatural and mighty. “Oh damn her,” Ittisana whispered.
“I think she will be,” Thak muttered. “Look. Wait.”
The sea heaved like a fist, lifting the remains of the burning and toppled ships, and slapped with dreadful force across the beach filled with the draugr, and twenty ships simply shattered. And the icy torrent slapped at the back of the draugr army, ripping at flesh, slaying hundreds, and then abated, just short of the elven army.
Thousands of the draugr were destroyed.
The elves shrieked with glee, they yelled, they hollered and hacked and pushed at their distraught enemy, and the draugr were pushed back to the sea, slowly, but inexorably.
The vision changed, we saw Kiera, wet and her hair dripping with icy water, and she was still speaking as the draugr swarmed around her, the elves very close. An arrow hit her in the chest, but she ignored it.
She let go of a spell. A glow surrounded the elven female. She blanched, she jumped from the saddle, but the bright, shining light could be seen anywhere.
“Thousand, two?” I asked, horrified. “So many lost.”
“Three to four thousand died,” Thak corrected me and I believed him. “That lady did well—”
“Look,” I said, as the vision changed.
There at the edge of the battle, was a house. It was a grand affair, three-storied, full of color and precious metals etched into its walls, but its roof was covered with birds, many of which had taken off after the horrible storm wind. But not all. A dark band of them sat still, and I realized what was happening.
Some of those birds twisted, fell into one, single shadow, and something stood up.
“The Queen,” I said.
“She wanted to find
her
,” Thak said with a roaring laughter that probably carried across the Straits. “She wanted to find their arch-mage! That’s all.”
Shannon wore a robe, dark blue, etched with silver. Her red hair was wild, her face white as marble, and her hand—the left one— was only bones, but she clutched Famine, Hel’s dagger, and that dagger gave her spells mortals could only dream of, and powers beyond the living. Perhaps she had such spells inside her, but the dagger whispered of goddesses’ own spells, and Shannon was not shy to use them. She stalked to the edge of the roof, glared down, and Kiera, who had found the enemy while Shannon was probably too well hidden to observe, swam away, and disappeared under the waves.
Shannon began to braid together a spell. It was a simple one, but enough to kill a high elf.
The female’s skin still glowed like a star. Elves and their shields covered the elfess, who was entering the mass of the enemy soldiers to hide herself again.
It didn’t help at all. She glowed like Mar in the sky.
Horrified, to be sure, she was rubbing her skin, but Shannon would have none of that. She finished braiding together the spell, gathered from the edges of the fires of Muspelheim, entwined with vapors of old ice, the dead, rotten fumes, and let go of it.